Three Musketeers
by K Nighthawk
Summary: AU. They grew up with each other. But when Kagome starts dating, can they convince her that he's bad news or will she have to learn it the hard way? Complete.
1. Chapter One: Unwelcome Fourth

AN: My job is rather monotonous, so I do my plotting while I fold laundry. And this story just randomly showed up a couple days ago, and I decided to sit down and save it for when I hit a snag in _One Wish_'s plot. And then I decided not to wait, and just post the whole thing this week, to give me time to yet again rewrite vignette five for _Two Mikos_. I need someone to be hospitalized or something, because quite honestly, I'm having trouble getting the mood right for it. It's a much deeper story than _One Wish_, so writing it is harder for me. So as an appeasement for no updates in either of those two stories, I'll be updating every day this week with this short story.

Disclaimer: Whatever.

**Three Musketeers**

_"All for one and one for all."_

-Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers

**Chapter One: Unwelcome Fourth**

We were the three musketeers, Sango, Kagome, and I. We had grown up on the same Tokyo block as each other. Saying 'we go way back' doesn't even begin to describe the plethora of memories we share. Kagome was the first girl I ever talked to, even if it was just to ask for my Frisbee back. Sango had been my first- if accidental- kiss, and had given me my first broken arm for it. We were only five, and I still say it only happened because Kagome pushed me. Best friends forever, up until **he** came along.

Sango and I were wary of the new boy at school- Sango because she was wary of anybody with a Y chromosome who wasn't me, and me because something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. Kagome, however, was nuts about him, along with ninety percent of the other girls in our high school.

_"Look at his hair! Look at his eyes! Check out that body! Do you think he'll like me?"_

Needless to say, Sango and I were not amused. Sango had sworn off men- mostly because only the perverts asked her out, and her fist was beginning to hurt from all the black eyes she was giving them- and I was too caught up in my studies to worry about female companionship. Sango and Kagome, platonic as the friendship was, were enough for me.

So we didn't understand Kagome's sudden leap into the social world of dating. Weren't we good enough for her? Why bring in an outsider we didn't know anything about, just because he was attractive?

Kagome started dating him anyway. Sango, continuing the trend, decided to give the latest pervert a chance to prove he wasn't thinking only with his pants when he asked her out. He lasted maybe an hour, but the damage was done. My best friends were dating, which meant less time for the three of us to do things.

Kagome and her boyfriend didn't get along well, or so it seemed to Sango and I. They were continuously fighting, running out on each other. The name-calling was rather juvenile, if you ask me.

What I didn't understand was why Kagome suddenly started taking those fights seriously, when she never had before. On her period, maybe?

Whatever it was, she came to me about it.

_"I'm not weak, am I? He keeps calling me weak, and stupid, and ugly. Why do I love him? All he does is say mean stuff to me. But then he apologizes, and it's all better. I can't keep doing this on-again, off-again thing with him."_

And with her still crying on my shoulder on my front porch, said bastard shows back up, most likely with another empty apology on his lips. But he takes one look at us, and he sees red. Had Kagome not been there, he probably would have beat the shit out of me for touching **his** girlfriend, never mind I'm her best friend. Of course, had Kagome not been there, neither would he.

And of course his yelling at her about being a two-timing whore starts her crying back up again.

He saved the apology for the next day, and she cheered back up. His threats to me were not so pleasant however. We privately declared a war to keep the other away from Kagome- him because he was stupidly jealous of our friendship, and me because I didn't want Kagome to continue to come crying to me because of him. He was no good for her, but she was too blinded by love to see it.


	2. Chapter Two: Dinner and a Show

**Three Musketeers**

_"All for one and one for all."_

-Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers

**Chapter Two: Dinner and a Show**

Because of his boyfriend status, he started out in the game ahead of me. Anything I said to her would be construed as jealousy because of her new relationship. Anything he said was gold.

I started out on the losing side, and continued in that direction. Kagome suddenly had no time for me. Her excuses started out as plausible- homework, dates, grounded, or babysitting. But when she told me she was headed out with Sango for one of their girls' night out things when I knew Sango was watching her little brother, I got suspicious. And called Sango.

Turns out Kagome had been giving Sango the same excuses as the ones to me. **He** obviously had said something to Kagome about Sango and I, and Kagome had taken his side.

The next time she tried this- she told me she and Sango were heading out shopping and told Sango that I was coming over to help tutor her for her statistics test. Which was very plausible, aside from the fact she stopped asking me for those the same time she started dating the asshole.

So Sango and I head over to her shrine to ask her mother where she was. And she tells us that Kagome's boyfriend had stopped by to pick her up just a few minutes ago to go eat at _Vincenni's_.

It's been almost a year since she had started dating him, why wouldn't she just say she had a date?

_Vincenni's_ is a formal dress sort of restaurant, so Sango convinces me that we needed to change before confronting the two. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened that night if we hadn't spent those extra fifteen minutes changing.

When we arrive, we explain to a sympathetic maitre de that we wanted to spy on our friend's date because her boyfriend had a history of causing scenes. He guides us to a back corner of the restaurant, where we can already hear the scene being started.

_"What the fuck is up with this 'I want to wait' crap? It's all you, you, you. There's two people in this relationship, Kagome, and a man has needs!"_

_"Don't you dare try to make me feel guilty for not sleeping with you!"_

_"Like hell I can't! Why the hell would you get into a relationship with someone if not for the sex?"_

_"That's not how it's supposed to be!"_

It's rather embarrassing to listen to, even with Kagome keeping her voice lowered so as not to disturb the other patrons. Everyone else has stopped talking to listen to the two argue. And quite honestly, I don't feel like listening to him try to get into my best friend's pants when she so obviously didn't want that to happen. So I take matters into my own hands.

_"If you're so hard up for sex, I'm free tonight."_

_"Stay the fuck away from me, you fucking faggot!"_

And out Kagome's irate date storms. I keep my face from blushing at what I had said as everyone stares at me, slightly annoyed that the show had ended. I can hear Sango's muffled giggles, and Kagome gapes at where her date had been standing, yelling at her. The maitre de coughs a few times, and everyone goes back to their meals.

As conversations returns around us, Kagome looks up at me.

_"You didn't have to do that."_

_"Yes, I did."_

_"I was handling it. He's just going to tell everyone you offered, and everyone will think you're gay."_

I shrug. Why would I care what people thought of me? They already think I'm gay for not dating either of the two beautiful women currently with me, or else they think I'm secretly doing them both. Denials only lead to more gossip, so I ignore it all.

_"This can't go on, Kagome."_

_"We're your friends, but lately, we don't even see you in class, much less out of school."_

_"He's making you choose, isn't he?"_

_"It's not a good thing if your boyfriend is jealous of your other friends. It's worse when you actually ditch those friends just to be with 'you owe me sex'-san."_

_"Don't you dare say that! He's not making me choose between him and you! You're the ones who keep putting him down. He's very sensitive-"_

_"Listen to yourself, Kagome! Does the shithead who just stormed out of here leaving you with the bill look anything at all like someone with nice emotions?"_

_"Fuck you, Sango. Fuck you both. It's my life, not yours. Don't tell me what I should."_

She storms after her date. The man who had brought us to the table asks which of us would like to pay the bill. I give him **his** name, number, and address, and told him to make him. Petty of me, I suppose, but it was his dinner, not mine, and I'm not about to pay for it.


	3. Chapter Three: Aftermath

**Three Musketeers**

_"All for one and one for all."_

-Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers

**Chapter Three: Aftermath**

I don't know how he found out it was me who told the restaurant where to find him, but he was not happy. Good thing Sango's beatings in my younger days had toughened me up enough that no bones were broken.

As it is, I'm sitting on my porch feeling sorry for myself, ice pack to swollen eye, when Kagome shows up. It's not to apologize. Nor does she notice my injured state.

_"You shouldn't have done that, you know."_

_"It was his dinner, he could pay for it. And since the two of you left so dramatically, there was no way they could get the money."_

_"They called the police, reported a disturbance. He spent the night in jail, for skipping out on the bill. He hates you."_

_"He's jealous of our nonexistent relationship."_

_"That's a load of crap."_

_"What can I say, he's an idiot. And to be paranoid, I'd like to say that it's only people who are cheating on their s.o. that claim theirs is cheating on them."_

_"I'm not listening to this."_

_"Then go away and leave me to my misery. Your boyfriend packs a mean punch."_

_"Oh my God."_

And now she notices the ice pack, the dirty clothes, the bloody lip. Have we fallen so far, that she no longer notices my state of health at once? Where's my best friend Kagome, and who is this stranger who has replaced her? Can I get her back?

But again, **he** interrupts our quasi-apology session, and things remain unpatched, and she drifts further away.

Is it just because we're growing older that the three musketeers are down to two, or is someone actively trying to break us apart?

A foolish question. He hates Sango and I. Kagome is his and his alone. Kagome probably thinks that's romantic. Too bad she can't see that all he's trying to do is to get her to sleep with him. And Sango and I can say nothing to her in fear of further destroying our once strong friendship.


	4. Chapter Four: Always There For You

**Three Musketeers**

_"All for one and one for all."_

-Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers

**Chapter Four: Always There For You**

But the relationship changes again.

I come home from track practice to see Sango comforting Kagome in Sango's driveway. I walk across the street to the two, and sit down to listen to Kagome intersperse words with sobs as she tells Sango her pains.

_"He's been cheating on me for months! And when I found them, he acted as if there was nothing wrong. 'Why can't I have two?' he said. As if we're just things for him to own and play with. Said if I wasn't going to put out, he could find someone who did. And asked if I wanted to do a threesome! As if I wanted to have sex with **him**, much less with him and another girl! He's the one who kept saying I was cheating on him, that nobody could be 'just friends' with someone with as huge breasts as I have. And all along it was him cheating on me. Asshole."_

Sometimes you have to learn things the hard way. Sango and I had done our best to warn Kagome, but she pushed us away, refusing to see the truth. And now she has her own proof of just who he is. I can't help but wonder if she'll again just accept his apology and welcome him back into her too-caring arms.

And she continues to cry.

_"Why didn't you tell me? You knew, you both knew, I know you did. Why didn't you warn me, tell me?"_

_"You wouldn't listen. He was everything in your eyes. You never believed us when we told you he was no good."_

_"I feel like such an idiot. I feel like I should watch the movie- good girl falls for bad boy. But where's my happy ending?"_

_"This bad boy has has no soft side to appeal to."_

_"He told me I couldn't go near you. That he would dump me if I did."_

It's both nice and horrifying to have your guesses proved true. I'm not sure if I'm happy to be proved right, or angry. Kagome's the most wonderful girl in the world and he's cheating on her.

_"You were right. You both were. I'm sorry. I was so blind. How can you even stand to be near me, when I kept pushing you away, calling you liars and all sorts of terrible things?"_

_"We're your friends, Kagome. We're not going to abandon you just because you're being foolish for love. We'd wait forever for you to come back to your senses."_

And Sango and Kagome begin to cry all over again. I'm not sure what a guy's supposed to do when placed in this sort of situation. I'm not going to cry. My masculinity is challenged enough as it is, and even if I do my best to ignore it, you can only take so much before you begin to wonder yourself.

They finally calm down.

_"I told him I wasn't some doormat he could walk all over whenever he wanted. That if he wanted her, he could have her, but he sure as hell wasn't having me. Then I punched him."_

_"Oh my."_

_"In the nuts."_

I flinch instinctively. Well, he had it coming. I knew sooner or later Kagome would see him for what he was. Love may be blind, but once you get used to the dark, you see with your other senses even better.

_"Security escorted me out of the mall."_

We all share a laugh over that.

_"So it's all over between you and him for good?"_

_"Yep. I've dumped him like a dirty diaper and I'm never picking him back up again. And if I try to, kindly knock some sense into me."_

_"Preferably with a two-by-four."_

_"Maa, maa, Sango, no need to be violent."_

_"When it comes to guys, there is always a need to be violent."_

_"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."_

_"Sango, he's a guy."_

_"And I can beat him up any day. Isn't that right?"_

_"I love you too, Sango. Please don't hurt me."_

The three musketeers. We're not perfect, but we'll always be there for each other. Just waiting for you to remember who your real friends are.


	5. Epilogue

**Three Musketeers**

_"All for one and one for all."_

-Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers

**Epilogue**

I read in the newspaper that Inu-Yasha was found guilty of killing Kikyo. Twenty-five to life. Guess beating her senseless and then throwing her out the window of her apartment on the twenty-third floor isn't enough for a death sentence. I feel bad about it- did Kikyo not have someone like me and Sango to talk her out of staying with him? Though in the end, it was Kagome who saved herself. We couldn't do much, could we?

It's left scars on her. She's not so quick to trust anymore. Demon with an angel's face. It's been two years and she's never dated again. Says she sworn off men forever.

I seem to recall Sango making that same vow, and she's been dating her current boyfriend for over a year. I look over at the two cuddled up on the couch. I'm sure I don't want to know where his other hand is.

He has no problems with Kagome and mine's friendship with Sango. The four musketeers, he claimed, once he heard of our name for ourselves. And we get along with him relatively well. Besides his random groping of Kagome that both girls hit him for. And him bringing me to a 'gentlemen's club.' I think I'm permanently stained red from embarrassment after realizing where I was.

_"When's she going to get here?"_

_"I don't know. She's driving here from work, so she's probably tied up in traffic."_

_"You ever going to confess your undying love for her or are you just going to continue to mope?"_

_"My what?"_

_"It was obvious the day I met you two you were nuts for her. Why the hell haven't you made any move on her?"_

_"I can't believe I'm having this conversation with someone whose way to pick up women **is** to move on them."_

_"That's so gross."_

_"Sango, that was years ago, I promise you. Before I met you. I am a changed man. You've got me so tied up in your beautiful eyes that I could never see anybody else."_

I don't understand why he would think that I loved Kagome. Not that I don't, mind you. But just in a brotherly fashion. Right? We grew up together. You don't see me falling in love with Sango, and I've been around her just as much as I've been around Kagome.

He's just seeing things.

And with my thoughts still on how wrong he was that I was in love with my best friend, she walks in.

_"I hate customers."_

_"Long day, Kagome?"_

_"Tell me again why I work the front desk at a hotel."_

_"Because it allows you to take morning classes and still work full time."_

_"Quit being logical."_

_"Sorry."_

_"See, you're totally nuts over-"_

_"Shut up."_

_"What's he talking about?"_

_"Just before you came in we were discussing-"_

_"Stuff it."_

_"Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty, Sango."_

_"So we heading to the movies or what?"_

_"It can be a double date."_

Kagome and I both stare at him. He's really stuck on the 'secretly in love' thing, isn't he? I look over at her and shrug helplessly.

She grins back at me.

_"Mom wants me home by ten, so no time for funny business afterwards."_

_"Kagome, you share an apartment with Sango, and it's already past ten."_

_"Oh yeah."_

And looking at her, maybe there is something in his words.

And realizing this, I notice that she's looking at me the same way I must be looking at her- as if she's seeing something for the very first time and suddenly realizing that it was there to be seen all along.

Maybe it's love, maybe it's not. Maybe it's just friendship or maybe it's something deeper. But this time, I'm not standing aside to let anyone else hurt her.

_"You two going to stare at each other all night or what?"_

_"Don't make me sic Sango on you, Miroku."_

_"That sounds dirty. Sango, whatever this 'siccing' entails, would you do it? Please?"_

_"You're only encouraging him, Hojo."_


	6. Final Words

**Final Words**

Just some things I wanted to wrap up about this story.

The premise of the story- friends growing apart as they grow older, and the boy problem Kagome has- is actually based on something from my own life. Last May, my younger sister broke up with her boyfriend of two years. She had been engaged to him for nine months. Most of those two years were not spent together because he's in the military. When he got assigned to a base in Great Britain, he convinced her that they should get married as soon as she graduated and have her move with him in England.

He completely destroyed her relationships with all her friends, with all of her family, and had my sister convinced we were the ones being wrong for trying to talk her out of marrying right out of high school. I was one of the few people in the family still on speaking terms with her when she finally realized just how fast she was jumping into things, and how stupid she was for believing he would kill himself if she didn't marry him.

The twist of making the narrator be Hojo came when I was at work. I was thinking of how poorly many of the series characters are portrayed in fanfiction- reduced down to a single quirk and zero personality, so I wanted to show just how deep even a minor character can be. You can see my take on Kikyo (very often portrayed as evil bitch out to kill everyone) in _Two Mikos_.

I know I'm going to get some whining (and maybe flames) about making Inu-Yasha into the evil boyfriend, even going so far as to make him kill Kikyo. Should I ever get the urge to do a sequel (very unlikely), it will probably come out he was framed for that by someone- Naraku, perhaps? (Just like in the series! I'm sticking to the story, really I am. _grins_)

But I did need a bad character, and since Inu-Yasha has the dubious pleasure of having an evil 'kill everything' personality when he turns into a demon, so I just borrowed that half.

The real part of the story is the first four chapters, where you really don't know who the two are. The epilogue I just added in so you would know who everyone was.

I suppose my story has two messages. The important one is that you find out who your real friends are when things get their worst. The bonus one is to try and make every character in your stories seem real, even if you don't like them. Hojo's a sweet, oblivious guy, but there's more to him, more to anyone, than just that.

-- Nighthawk

14 August 2004


End file.
